Ben Shapiro decries the “skeeziness” around Trump involving crypto investments: “This sort of skeeziness is likely to have really bad political effect”
Shapiro: “The Trump family should stop openly engaging or engaging at all in many of the sort of activities in which they are currently engaged”
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From the May 28, 2025, edition of The Daily Wire's The Ben Shapiro Show
BEN SHAPIRO (HOST): If you wish for crypto to actually become a solid part of the financial framework, then what you can't have is the appearance of people selling snake oil out there on the basis of fame and fortune. You can't do that, especially if those people are connected to the Trump administration who's drawing all the regulations. That is a problem because if there is an economic downturn, I promise you, promise you, if there's an economic downturn, Democrats are going to run successfully on the proposition that a bunch of people got rich, who are close to the Trump family, and that everybody else got stuck holding the bag. This is why the economy can't collapse under President Trump.
It's also why the Trump family should stop openly engaging or engaging at all in many of the sort of activities in which they are currently engaged. And I mean that ranging from social clubs in Washington, DC designed to essentially provide access to members of the administration to crypto events in Qatar. Right?
Today, according to The New York Times, Trump Media and Technology Group, that is the parent company of Truth Social, said it would raise $2.5 billion dollars from institutional investors to invest in Bitcoin. So they're moving away from their social media play originally, and they're moving into a financial services and crypto play. Now Trump Media's largest shareholder is President Trump. They're gonna raise $1.5 billion dollars from about 50 institutional investors by selling 58 million shares. They're gonna raise an additional $1 billion dollars from the sale of bonds that can also be converted into shares at a later date. That's going to dilute the value of the Trump Media stock right now, but it is also going to radically increase the holdings of the company, of course. And by buying Bitcoin while the Trump administration is simultaneously attempting to set up a national treasury in Bitcoin, increasing the price — because, again, higher demand means higher price when the supply remains stable, which it is in Bitcoin. That's the whole purpose of Bitcoin. When you do that, what you are doing looks a little skeezy. Again, all this sort of skeeziness — we talked about with the Qatar jet. This sort of skeeziness is likely to have really bad political effect.
Right now, again, if everybody is sort of fat and happy, none of it matters. But if the economy downturns, the sort of oligarchy play that AOC and Bernie Sanders are making is gonna sound a lot more plausible. And if Democrats take Congress in November 2026 thanks to some sort of economic downturn, I promise you, all the people who are pro-crypto are gonna get it right in the teeth because Democrats are going to see the entire crypto industry as working closely with the Trump administration. They will see it as an enemy, and they will attack it with alacrity.
The appearance of impropriety can have the exact same effect as impropriety even if nothing is technically being done wrong. And I don't know whether something is technically being done wrong here. I don't. And I'm not a legal analyst when it comes to SEC filings.
What I will say is that World Liberty Financial, which is the large crypto instrument that is co-run by the Witkoff boys and the Trump boys and and some of the other members of team Trump, World Liberty Financial is currently selling tokens, like millions and millions — like, tens of millions of dollars of tokens. Those tokens are not resellable.
So you are effectively buying, quote, a voting right in World Liberty Financial's decentralized finance policy. I don't even know what that means. Maybe it means something, but I'm not sure why you would expend perfectly good money for a token that is not resellable and has no inherent value so you can vote on the direction of a company in which you do not have even remotely a majority because World Liberty Financial is 75% owned by the Trump Organization, from my understanding. Right?
That sort of stuff, does that look great? Is that the sort of stuff that is going to redound to the benefit — non-financial benefit, political benefit of President Trump's agenda?
I'm putting these warnings out there because if those warnings are not out there, then if the thing happens, people are gonna get taken by surprise. But they shouldn't be taken by surprise because Democrats are already planning this playbook.